A few years ago, I read Steven Johnson’s book Emergence. It helped me make sense of a lot of things and influenced the way I thought about how systems work. Then I heard that Johnson was co-founding a site called outside.in, which would draw from the community of individual bloggers to create a sort of organism with a life and intelligence of its own–creating a whole that is smarter than the sum of its parts.

Today, that organism is partnering with BlogRoanoke.com.

If you haven’t used outside.in before, here’s the breakdown: the site scours the Internet for news from bloggers, Twitter, newspapers, and events databases to create a composite of local news. Then they map those stories to specific geographic locations and put it all on a map. The result is hyperlocal news of the kind that you can’t get from a single source. It’s what we’ve started doing on a small scale at BlogRoanoke, and now outside.in will help us (and you!) do it more effectively.

Here’s how: Bloggers add their site to outside.in, continue producing their great local content, geotag and optimize their feed via the tools provided by outside.in, and excerpts from their posts (with links back to the original content) show up on outside.in and on BlogRoanoke. This increases clicks and readership for local bloggers.

Just in case you missed it…this is a Big Deal. When you sign up for outside.in, you’ll get exposure on outside.in and its network of mainstream media partners. You’ve just gone from local to big time–while staying local. In fact, while becoming even more local. Hyperlocal, even.

The best part? You don’t need to do much more than you’re doing right now. Just submit your feed (if we haven’t done so already!) stay tuned here for more tips and tricks for better hyperlocal blogging and building your audience. Your posts will start appearing on our storymap (a version of which you can see above).

“We see this partnership as one that will help Roanoke bloggers generate more traffic and learn more about hyperlocal blogging,” said outside.in community coordinator Chrysanthe Tenentes, ”and one that will help outside.in better represent Roanoke on our site.”

Win. Win.

Keep your eyes out for a weekly guest post from Chrysanthe. We’re excited about this partnership and what it means for Roanoke Valley bloggers!